Laboring in the obscurity he so richly deserves for over a decade now, your crusty correspondent sporadically offers his views on family, law, politics and money. Nothing herein should be taken too seriously: If you look closely, you can almost see the twinkle in Curmudgeon's eye. Or is that a cataract?

Monday, May 23, 2011

Left behind today's headlines -- Curmudgeon reviews the news

The Gospel of Matthew warns (at the end of the parable of the wise and foolish virgins, ch. 25:13) that you do not know either the day or the hour of the Master's return. Luke 12:40 says, "You also must be prepared, for at an hour you do not expect, the Son of Man will come."

However, there is some good that can come out of this failure -- if Harold Camping's erroneous prophecy reminds us to curb our wretched excesses, to behave better, and to live our lives as if the end may come at any time. Even the atheists, chortling about how silly these True Believers look after having not been assumed bodily into Heaven, should recognize the wisdom of this.

As for Camping's followers, they should go back and review Luke 21:8 and Matthew 24:5. There, Jesus warns that many will come in His name and warn of the end times. But, He says, don't fall for it.

(For the record, I stuck close to Long Suffering Spouse all weekend. If she started levitating, I told her, I was grabbing onto her ankles for dear life.)

Views: Nationally, gasoline prices are supposedly below $4 a gallon, at $3.9074 per gallon. But Chicago continues to lead the nation, averaging $4.38 per gallon for self-serve unleaded gas. It's running around $4.45-4.49 in my neck of the woods; there are lower pump prices in the more distant suburbs.

In other news, oil company executives remain at large.

Does anyone ever listen to those Democratic and Republican broadcasts on the weekend? You can watch Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison's address at this link; it was on the radio when I was getting dressed Saturday.

Her statement provides a good example of why I can never belong to either party. Sen. Hutchison makes sense when she says domestic energy production has to be increased to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. She may even have a point when she says that the Obama administration is hostile to increased energy production at home because of arguably overstated environmental concerns. We pay the price at the pump for the Obama administration's ideological purity.

However... the BP oil spill did happen. We can't turn the corporates loose on the land and sea unwatched -- as we seem to have done prior to that oil spill. (Disaster plans to protect walruses in the Gulf of Mexico didn't exactly impress me.) Maybe the Obama administration has overcorrected; maybe more permits for deepwater drilling should be issued.

But Sen. Hutchison did not call for repeal of the billions in tax breaks we give the oil companies. Instead, she warned "the Obama administration is seeking to impose more regulations and taxes on oil and gas companies." Repeal of subsidies would not be a tax increase for the oil companies; it would be an end of unwarranted special treatment. And given the billions in profits that the oil companies are reaping, it seems the very least we should do.